ReThink Islam
ReDiscover God
ReKindle Your Soul
ReImagine Your Life
Welcome to ReThink
Some questions refuse to stay quiet. Questions about God, about meaning, about how to live with integrity and purpose in a world that grows more complex by the day. Questions about what fairness truly requires and what justice actually looks like in a multi-polar world that is crowded with competing faiths, rival cultures, and irreconcilable perspectives, each with an unshakeable claim on the truth.
For those of us who are Muslim, these questions arrive already in conversation with a tradition:
What can Islam genuinely offer our age?
What would a genuine Islamic renewal look like?
Not cosmetic renovation, but the kind of renewal that restores the soul of a tradition and brings its promise of Mercy, Justice, and Peace into living contact with the present?
These pages are my attempt to engage those questions, with the seriousness they deserve, and the openness they require — written not from a place of arrival, but from one of sustained, committed inquiry.
There is no shortage of voices speaking about Islam today — confidently, loudly, and often without the grounding that these conversations deserve. So, a word about who is writing this seems warranted.
I am a Muslim professor, with a fairly unusual background: an analytical social scientist by training, a Muslim scholar's son by birth, and a student of Islam by both. Thirty-plus years of rigorous academic research on one side; seven generations of Muslim scholarship passed on through my grandfathers and woven into the fabric of my upbringing on the other.
I offer these writings not as the final word on anything, but as the considered reflections of someone formed by that unlikely combination and humbled by the conviction that faith and critical thought were never meant to be separated.
— Prof. Fatih (yes, that is my real name — and yes, it essentially means Faith)
Finding Your Way Around
The ABCs of Islam (top menu) is where I'd invite anyone new to the tradition to begin — short, accessible pieces written to illuminate rather than overwhelm. They address the questions that matter most:
Why believe in God? What is God in Islam?
Who was the real Muhammad? What were his teachings?
What is the Quran? Why do Muslims call it an “eternal miracle”?
What is jihad, really? (The answer may surprise you)
What does Islam teach about Jesus? about Mary?
How does Islam understand women?
And so on…
And wherever persistent misconceptions have taken root, these articles address them too, with the same care for evidence and fairness that any serious inquiry demands.
The ReThink […] Series goes further. Faithful to its name, these articles provide deeper explorations and critical/analytical investigations that reassess, re
for readers who already carry some knowledge of Islam and are ready to do the harder, richer work of thinking it through.
Whatever brought you here, your questions are welcome. Use the form below to send them along, and I will try to answer them in due time.
Not Sure where to Start? Choose Your Adventure
Start with the ABCs — short, accessible pieces on the questions that matter most
Reflections for those ready to rethink, rediscover, and renew
You're in the right place — these pieces are written for open minds and honest questions
Rigorous explorations for readers already carrying some knowledge of Islam
ReThink is born out of a deep personal conviction: that the most pressing challenge for any Muslim today is to revisit, reconsider, reexamine, rethink, and reassess every dimension of Islam — and of faith more broadly — with fresh eyes and a fearless mind.
This conviction does not stem from doubt or weakness of faith.
On the contrary, it springs from an unshakable certainty that true faith is eternal and that the foundations of Islam are rock solid — like a majestic tree whose roots are anchored to the core of the Earth, while its mantle and branches soar to the sky.
And yet the tree is never finished — it grows, it stretches, it reaches. It is essentially reborn every spring.
Yet the tree can only continue to thrive through the deliberate work of the faithful, who must carefully evaluate which parts of Islam constitute:
Its roots — the core tenets of faith — to be protected with care and discernment against every distortion;
Its trunk — the core practices — to be nourished and sustained, lived rather than merely performed;
Its branches — the beautiful canopy of Mercy — to be tended with wisdom: pruned where needed, supported where they bend, and allowed to grow in new directions to cover new cultures and times;
Its leaves — the living, ever-changing expressions of the faith — to be held gently, and released with the seasons;
Its fruits — the raison d'être of the tree — that bestows heavenly bliss and blessings in this world and in the hereafter.
These fruits of inner peace, true joy, and justice for all can transform our earthly life into a heavenly existence.
Yet this glorious tree of true faith can only stay healthy, thrive, and bear its full load of fruits when it is meticulously maintained and lovingly renewed by the faithful.
For the first millennium of its existence, the Blessed Tree of Islam delivered fruits of Mercy and Justice in such abundance and continuity that were unprecedented in human history.
Since then, the natural processes that drive the ebbs and flows of civilizations — as well as the Muslims' weakening diligence — led to a gradual stagnation in the growth and evolution of the Blessed Tree of Islam.
ReThink is my small but deliberate act of tending. And it is an open invitation — to every Muslim with an open mind and a generous heart, and to every person of faith or goodwill who has ever sensed that the world needs something deeper than what it is being offered — to join in what I believe is the most urgent and most beautiful labour of our time.
LATEST POSTS
During an intellectual meditative journey into the word “Hû” — هُوَ in لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ (There is no god by He) and قُلْ هُوَ اللّٰهُ (Say: He is Allah) and its meanings for the physical aspects of creation, I was contemplating the page of “air” when an exquisitely subtle point of tawḥīd (Divine Oneness) instantly manifested itself:
Indeed, just as a handful of soil that serves as a pot for a hundred flowers in succession, if attributed to nature and causes, would necessitate either that this small pot contains, on a miniature scale, a hundred — or perhaps as many as the flowers — invisible machines and factories; or that each particle of that tiny piece of soil possesses the knowledge to form all those different flowers, with their distinct properties and life-sustaining mechanisms, possessing endless knowledge and infinite power like a deity.
Likewise, each piece of air and wind, which serves as a throne for divine command and will, would require, within each fragment of wind, within each breath, within the tiny amount of air that forms the word “Hû” (هُوَ), the presence of miniature switchboards, receivers, and transmitters of all the telephones, telegraphs, radios, televisions, and all other types of communications that take place across the world, and be able to perform these endless tasks simultaneously and instantaneously.